A Second Chance to Make a First Impression
by FantasiaWandering
Summary: No more games. No more trust. It is time for Karai to bring Leonardo to her father's justice. But the Leo she finds is not the one she set out seeking; this Leonardo, lost in time and space, has never met Karai before. And as the battle is fought, certain truths come to light that will change everything...forever.
1. Chapter 1

_So a while back, I started roleplaying with oroku-karai on tumblr (run by the incredibly, ridiculously multi-talented jasjuliet). And this was the result. As with all other roleplays, what you're reading is an entirely unplanned, call-and-response dialogue on tumblr. We're currently not really consulting on what happens or what comes next. As such, this is the organic, raw, unedited version of something that suddenly became very, very magical._

_All you really need to know about Leo at this point is that this is the same Leo from Falling. He fell through a rift in time and space into the roleplay world on tumblr, and he's been out of Falling and in the other world for a long time now, and over time, he has been able to see (and move to) more and more worlds in his head (this is NOT normal, and there is a reason for it, which I haven't revealed yet). Because of that, he has now encountered many different versions of his family, and been adopted by Shard (see Shards of a Memory if you don't know who she is yet). Leo himself has never met Karai, since he left his family just before I, Monster, though he's heard about her from the others._

_All of Karai's parts are written by jasjuliet. All of Leo's parts are written by me. It takes place just after Karai's Vendetta._

* * *

She'd found him.

Leonardo's familiar silhouette hurdling from rooftop to rooftop had once been a source of feverish excitement for the girl. Sentenced to a childhood in the company of brooding shinobi, she'd learned to take advantage of mischief where she could make it. Unexpectedly so, Leo quickly became a promise of good fun and merry chase exclusive to her as they crossed swords under the pretense of angry fathers.

Their play was dangerous, yes, but they _had_ been honed into dangerous children.

She reached for her blade. Karai supposed she should've expected the most recent turn of events.

She didn't want to fight with him anymore.

But tonight, she'd been given orders and warning. Failure in rapid succession left Karai under the precarious place of the Shredder's scrutiny. Coming home empty-handed was no longer an option, but Karai still hesitated to launch herself off the ledge after the boy.

Their truce seemed rather fragile, short-lived in the face of a feud spanning their lifetimes. She'd called it 'friendship' in haste, and wouldn't make the same mistake again.

The only acceptable response to the sight of Hamato Leonardo was hostility.

She stared intently after him, but did not feel the malice rise.

Instead, Karai shut down these thoughts, considering them useless to her task. She halved the distance between them with a speed inspired by the desire to _finish _things, and when Karai swung her sword, it came down in heavy, looping blows that jarred her to the shoulder. She did not remove her mask. There wasn't a smile for Leonardo beneath it tonight.+

* * *

Leo had needed to _run._ He adored his siblings, he truly did. But twenty one siblings — he thought, he wasn't even really sure anymore — more or less under the same roof had driven him topside in a desperate search for a moment or two of quiet. So he ran. Abandoning thought, and reason, and worry, abandoning himself to the moment of freefall as he leaped between rooftops, the closest a turtle would ever come to flying. And in those moments, he could almost forget how desperately he was starting to miss his own brothers.

He smiled a little sadly as the moonlight caught the flash of purple in the mask woven into the wrappings at his wrist. He'd been lucky, terribly lucky that the rift had dumped him in Donnie's lap. He would have been dead a few times over without Donnie, and yet the rift had given him a home and a family — a _large_ family — instead. And he was grateful. He _was_. He loved each and every one of them to pieces. But he missed home.

The melancholy wasn't like him. He told himself later that it was the only reason his attacker managed to get the drop on him. It was still inexcusable, but it was a reason, at least. He whirled just in time to get a katana up to block, and as he fended off the heavy blows, he grit his teeth in annoyance. He really was _not _in the mood to fight tonight.

"I don't— know who — you are," he spat between blows. "But you picked — a _really_ — bad time."

* * *

His words were minced between the slithering clash of steel on steel as Karai's charge gained momentum. With a heavy-handed strike, however, she found her wakizashi's path halted at the apex of crossed katana, Leonardo's grim expression sectioned off into three.

Her arms shook, but she bore down harder and forced the familiar stalemate to last a few seconds longer than necessary.

He was lying. Had to be. Karai's gaze narrowed as she searched his eyes, but she couldn't deny a difference much too subtle to place.

A moment more and the kunoichi dislodged her blade from the trifecta with an unceremonious grunt as she sprung several feet backward, an angry hand clapped to her mask.

"_Enough!_"

It clattered to the ground as Karai brandished her weapon and gestured emphatically to Leonardo's throat.

"Refusing to acknowledge me won't dull the edge of my blade."

She could feel her breath coming in hard, furious pants that did nothing to improve her focus. Even the doubt throbbing like a warning siren in her skull could not temper her anger. Their fight at the docks had been interrupted much too abruptly and her earlier reservations were slipping fast.

"Say it again."

_I dare you._


	2. Chapter 2

There was something about this girl… something about the ferocity and desperation as she bore down against his katana that told him this was more than just another pawn of the Foot.

He leaped back when she did, his katana up to guard as she tore her mask off and ranted at him. She wasn't just angry. She was _furious_. His brow furrowed in frustrated annoyance aT finding himself the focus of an anger he knew absolutely nothing about, although….

"Look," he said, his katana still guarding in front of him, "crazy lady. I have no idea who you are, but from the way you're going at me, I'd say that you've got it in for my twin, which means that you and I are probably not going to be the best of—"

He broke off, realization ticking in his brain, and his gaze went cold and distant as his eyes narrowed. "Wait. Karai, right?" He shifted his stance, his hands tightening on the katana as he prepared to attack. "You're the one who hurt my sister?"

* * *

Despite the newfound vigor feeding into Karai's animosity, her snarl weakened. Her anger did not brim when he spoke, transforming itself into a convoluted mess of confusion and disbelief.

What was this talk of twins and sisters?

_'You speak Japanese?'_

_'I picked up a few words from…my brothers.'_

His stance took form and his eyes hardened like the grip on his katana.

Of course.

The lull extended itself a few moments more as she searched for an opening to exploit, her gaze riveted on his. Karai strove to understand the mite of truth hidden beneath the wordplay, but did it matter? Whatever the mutant before her claimed, he shared a face, a voice with the Leonardo she'd been tasked to capture. They sported the same mask, and if sight and sound weren't indication enough, Karai's sword arm certainly recognized the cadence of his blows.

_'Same gait, same idiosyncratic kata, same reversal strike that never fails to catch me off guard…'_

Shredder wouldn't be able to tell the difference. She couldn't.

…Same stupid, overtly naive eyes, and they were guilty of speaking louder than his words, just as Karai had been guilty of trusting them.

_He isn't lying._

It didn't matter.

"And you're the one who tried to kill my father!"

It was excuse enough to swing her sword.

* * *

"No I didn't!" He met her blow, disengaging and coming back together faster than he ever had with anyone other than his _sensei_. "That was my twin. But really, how can you blame him— unh!"

Her knee caught him in the solar plexus and he went down, rolling back to his feet and wincing slightly as their blades rang together again. She was _good. _Scary good. He'd almost be tempted to admire her, if he didn't already know what she'd done to his family. What she'd tried to do to April.

"All we wanted was to live in peace, but your _father…" _the word left a bad taste in his mouth; the very idea of the Shredder being anything like the strength, and love, and nurturing pride that was his _sensei _turned his stomach a little. "…your father came after _us._ Your father tried to blow up our home." He was panting a little as he fended off her blows. "Your father… almost killed…. me and my brothers." He swept his leg, attempting to take her feet out from under her, but she was too fast, dodging out of his reach.

She came in to meet him again, their blades locking together in another stalemate, and as her gaze met his, full of fury and rage… and pain… he felt something strange creeping through him. It was almost… almost pity. He couldn't afford pity. Not now. His eyes narrowed and he pushed back against her.

"And your father _did_ kill my mother!"

* * *

Before she could do much to slow her forward momentum, the impact of two katana knocked Karai's sword arm aside and left her vulnerable. A terrifying moment passed before she managed to gather her wits enough for a hasty, upward strike, catching a follow-up blow on her armored forearm. It sent her skidding across the rooftop with a cry.

_'My father. My father.'_

"He's just a miserable man," she muttered, shoving to her feet and wiping the granite from her chin. Leonardo didn't hear her.

_'A miserable man who was in love, once.'_

She fell upon Leonardo relentlessly, each blow more terrible than the last, all the speed and might she could muster intent upon violently silencing him. His accusations, as true as they were, served as painful reminders of her cause, her purpose, her place in the mad orchestra of shared hate between Oroku and Hamato.

Yet how could a murderer train up a student as wholesome as this?

Their blades locked. His eyes met hers and Karai was forced to look down, embarrassed by the flash of pity she saw in them.

But when he spoke again, it was her undoing.

' "…your father _did_ kill my mother!" '

Something snapped. Karai's jaw went slack and her stomach clenched hard as stone. Leonardo's thrust sent her sprawling, but within seconds she'd halved the distance between them, a guttural snarl rattling in her throat.

Karai's sword hummed with the velocity of her arcing stroke a moment before it bit into the pavement and vibrated loudly enough to set the girl's teeth on edge.

She clenched a hand about the pommel to silence it.

"My mother was murdered at the hands of Hamato Yoshi, and my father suffered the consequences," she uttered through gritted teeth. "Cast out of his clan and nearly burned alive, Father bore his grief alongside the shame and hate meant for _your_ dishonorable Master_. "_

Karai advanced, blade forgotten as her words crescendoed into a broken shout.

"_I_ am Oroku Karai, and _I_ was raised to avenge Mother's death and Father's dishonor!" Her voice cracked, and she swiped at her eyes angrily, leaving smeared red paint in her wake.

"I have her eyes, her hair. I have her talent with the jujiken-Father has always said so. Her blood runs through my veins, and I will _never_ know her! But _I_ am the daughter of Tang Shen! _Me. How dare you speak of mothers?_"


	3. Chapter 3

"Wait, wait, wait, back it up," Leo said, his eyes widening as Karai advanced on him, his katana only half on guard as she'd left her sword behind. His head reeled as he attempted to process what she was telling him, his entire existence shifting and spinning on its axis as pieces of the puzzle fell into place and new reality began to show itself.

But before he could pursue the thought, an arrow whizzed through the darkness and lodged under the scutes of his shell. Apparently another Foot patrol had caught sight of the fighting, his favourite archer among them. Leo whirled, snarling in fury. "Not. _NOW!" _Sheathing one sword and yanking the arrow from his shell, he grabbed the shifting realities in his head and _pulled._

New York vanished. The rooftops vanished. Instead, there was only him and Karai, and an empty hilltop in a world that had never known the human race, beneath a diamond-dusted sky shimmering with the colours and patterns of the aurora borealis.

Leo let himself fade into the shadows, but he didn't leave. He could abandon her here, in this reality so far from the others that you _couldn't _get yourself back without his unusual gift, but he wasn't going to do that. There was no honour in it. He wasn't sure _how_ he was going to get her to hold still long enough to bring her home again, but he'd figure that out later. He just wanted a moment of quiet to process what she had told him, in a world where there were no other humans to interfere.

"You're telling me," he said, very softly, "that your mother was Tang Shen?"

But already, things were coming clearer. That strange feeling that was nagging at his over-amplified sibling-sense. The familiar feeling when he looked into her eyes, especially now, without the makeup to mask them. She did have her mother's eyes. He had seen them in the photograph he bowed to every day of his life.

And he had seen them just the other day, as Shard took him into her arms and covered him with kisses.

"Oh, boy," he muttered. "Our lives just got _really_ complicated."

* * *

The moment she saw the advancing contingent, Karai threw up a fist in signal to the shinobi leading them on.

_"Yamete!" _she barked_, _and the order rang out in unison with Leonardo's own angry exclamations. Eager to avoid the chagrin of being seen in so disoriented a state, Karai hastily rubbed an arm over her face and reached for the impaled jujiken behind her, but the slither of grass met her palm instead.

The world was engulfed in silence, and the surrounding paradise so terrified and amazed her that Karai wondered if she'd been run though by Leonardo's sword. Trembling arms fell to her sides. A persistent breeze dried her tear stains and left her feeling stiff in the face, but all else was forgotten as different sorts of blades altogether skimmed against her knuckles.

_'Sugoi.'_

Thunderheads moved like hulking monoliths across the mountainous horizon, illuminated by the light of auroras Karai had only seen in books as a girl. And the sky…she found it almost impossible to tear her gaze away from the diamonds tossed into the unending blanket of pitch black expanse. It threatened to swallow her, and Karai suddenly felt a desperate urge to surrender to the vastness completely.

Then Leonardo spoke, softly, and Karai felt an inexplicable tug deep within her center. Her arms wrapped around herself, a protective gesture as she scanned the hilltop and found he was nowhere to be seen.

Yet again, his voice disturbed the silence, and with it, a presence that reluctantly brushed against her mind. Karai recoiled as if burned and hunched her shoulders against the wind that began to roil the grass about her.

She was sure of it, now. Leonardo was a demon.

"Stop hiding from me," she whispered, _felt._

_ 'Look at me. I can't lie to you here.'_


	4. Chapter 4

Thunder rumbled across the hilltop, underscoring Karai's words. He glanced up at the clouds on the horizon, watching them begin to blot out the impossibly vast number of stars. He'd never seen it rain here before.

A soft whisper from Karai tugged on something within him, his brow furrowing as certain uncomfortable truths focused his attention back on her. Even without the monumental new knowledge hanging over him, he would never have been able to leave her now. From the hushed whisper upon first seeing the quiet world on which they found themselves, to the way she hunched in on herself, every protective instinct he had in him was screaming out to him to go to her. To shelter her. To keep her safe from the oncoming storm.

Common sense stopped him. He knew how dangerous she was. Knew that getting that close to her was more than likely to end with one of the knives she doubtless had concealed on her somewhere embedded somewhere that was going to make him really uncomfortable.

And then she asked him to stop hiding.

_Niichan?_ Mikey's voice stirring his memory. _Niichan, I don't like this game anymore. Niichan, where are you? I'm scared. Please stop hiding from me_.

He'd never been able to resist it. Not then. Not now. He had gone to Mikey in the darkness, taking him into his arms and telling him a story to chase the fear away, weaving with his words a net of protection, and safety, and love.

There were so many things that needed to be said. To keep them secret would be to cause immeasurable pain. But to speak them could cause even more. He didn't know what to do.

"Once upon a time," he said quietly, "there was a boy who loved a girl. They loved each other so much that she left her father's school in the mountains, against his wishes, so that they could be married. And they were happy together. So very happy. And the birth of their baby daughter only served to increase their joy."

He moved closer, pulling out his Tphone and tapping into the menu.

"But their happiness was shattered when the boy's best friend, who also loved the girl, grew so jealous of their happiness that he could no longer stand to see the girl he loved in the arms of his friend. And so they fought, and a terrible fire was the result. The boy, now a man, rescued his daughter from the flames, but by the time he could return for his wife, it was too late. And when he pulled the body of his beloved from the burning ruins of their home, he discovered that his daughter was gone, too. Lost, as he believed, to the fire that had spread to the porch where he had left her."

He scrolled through the options at his fingertips, searching, one eye still on the hunched figure in the grass. It had to be here. He'd made sure Donnie had put it there after he had learned the story of what had happened to the family all those months ago.

"And so he left that place of dark memories that held nothing more for him, and he started a new life in a new land. But he was lonely. And so one day, he sought the comfort of a pet, to keep him company in this strange new world. But he was interrupted by cruel visitors from beyond the stars. And in the battle, there was a terrible accident that changed him and his four new pets into something other than what they had been."

_There._

"But in the fifteen years since that day, he has never forgotten the woman he loved or the precious daughter he believed lost. He and his new family look upon them and honour them every day. And the little girl did indeed have her mother's eyes."

Close enough now, he tossed the TPhone to the grass before Karai. The portrait of Hamato Yoshi's family stared up at her. The portrait he had bowed to every day of his life bathed her face in light, highlighting the face that screamed the truth at him now that he had been made aware of it. He couldn't understand how he had ever missed it in the first place.

The feelings within him were so twisted and conflicted, he no longer knew quite what he felt. But he didn't want to hurt her. And so he reached out as best he could, with the sibling sense made bright and vibrant by the rift, and tried as best he could to soften his words with a feeling that she was not alone. As his twin had caught her, so too would he be there to catch her if she fell.

"She has her mother's eyes… but the rest of her features belong to her father."


	5. Chapter 5

_'Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a girl.'_

Karai raised her gaze unbidden when he spoke. He was about as see through as kami paper, the concavity of his patterned shell distorting the landscape behind it. The most vibrant aspect of him were his eyes, clear and guileless as shallow ocean water and undiluted by the graying landscape. Her shoulders had gone rigid, jaw working furiously when Leonardo's voice washed over her with a tenderness that carried above the rolling thunder even as the wind peaked in its ferocity.

Karai had become a battered thought caught between two extremes, the wind at her back cold and biting even as the story Leonardo wove threatened to scald the skin beneath her armor. Grass curled and withered under the heat. Trepidation hastened her breath, and no matter how much she willed wrath to strengthen her limbs, they remained heavy as lead beneath her. So she listened. Envisioned the girl's face as her own, if only because she had little recollection of Tang Shen's. Father had only allowed her to see the sole picture he owned three times. She remembered eyes, yes, a soft mouth, but even more vividly the photograph's fire-browned edges.

She dared not conjure a face for the boy.

The story's scorching caress became too much to bear when he spoke of the fire.

"Stop,_ please-_"

He didn't. Panic blossomed within her so strongly that it almost overrode her sense of reason and sent her fleeing blindly over the hilltop's edge-and still, she heard every relentless word as if they were meant for her mind, not ears. The woman's face-her own-disappeared in flames, and Karai stifled a deep shudder.

Then the heat and wind stopped their war. Angry thunderheads stood still and dissipated thinly across the night sky, the story gaining the quality of rushing water. Leonardo could not have known how deeply his power made word, memory, and intent resonate in the quasi formed world, the entirety of it seeming to retreat into silence when he whispered of the man's journey. Of the change that overtook them.

Karai leveled a heavy gaze upon Leonardo as his form grew dense and solid again. She was hearing his voice now, just hearing, no longer struggling under the weight of his mind's vivid narrative. This much, Karai could bear, though the rest of her felt loose and unhinged, as if the implications had attempted against the very framework of her being.

Names assigned themselves to the tale's characters, but not the one's she'd been raised believing. Yoshi and Saki, two brash youths who'd caught sight of the schoolmaster's daughter when she ventured down their path.

Saki, _Father_, unscarred and handsome. Saki bearing down upon his almost-brother, Yoshi who in turn stood protectively over Tang Shen. _And…_

_'…in the fifteen years since that day, he has never forgotten the woman he loved or the precious daughter he believed lost. He and his new family look upon them and honour them every day. And the little girl did indeed have her mother's eyes.'_

The grass crunched beneath him when he moved, and Karai jerked away, her body aching as if it was the first time she'd moved in years. Familiar fear caused her stomach to clench and her hand flew to a well-hidden tanto at her side. Doubt flared unbidden as she stared up at the mutant, wanting desperately to believe even as she despised him for driving her to her knees. For burning her so deeply with a farced child's tale. For the pity in his eyes.

Leonardo seemed to reconsider his approach, and he tossed the mundane little hulk of his cell phone at her feet. She stared at it. Smiled very, very softly at the unceremonious confession in the form of a photo-of-a-photo.

_He moves mountains and can disappear at will, and this is his only proof?_

_It's a stubborn thought. It's just the remnants of her doubt rallying into a final, half hearted hurrah._

Karai pressed her thumb and forefinger against the glass screen, spreading them away from each other so that the image grew in size. The thought died upon her tongue as her mother's face gazed back at her with eerie benevolence. Tang Shen. The edges of the photograph were framed in wood, not burns.

Karai swallowed, sliding the image until the man's face came into view. She stared at his left eye, the only one she'd be able to recognize, and decided that the man in the photo was not Oroku Saki by any means. Suddenly shy, she picked up the phone, only half-aware of its ironic, shelled structure as she gazed at the baby girl between the couple.

There was no reason to be bashful of it. If Leonardo spoke the truth, then the photograph was stranger to her than him.

"I was missed?"

Her voice was small and hoarse, and it hurt to speak. The phone held close illuminated her haggard expression and she ventured a hesitant glance at the mutant before her, feeling as if she'd aged a thousand years. Karai braced a hand on her knee to stand, swaying under the laborious effort, but she did not last on her feet and fell before she could reach for him.


	6. Chapter 6

Time swirled around them, molten and fluid, burning and freezing, as the moment simultaneously stretched to eternity and passed by in a heartbeat. He saw it on her face, plain beneath the smeared war paint, as she looked at the truth and saw herself reflected in it.

And her voice, and the fragile beauty in it, broke him. Tears, silent and almost unnoticed, dampened the fabric of his mask as she spoke and struggled to stand. "Every day," he said, his voice breaking on the words. "Every single day. Every time we passed by the shrine, for as long as I can remember, we honoured the family we had lost. Honoured you."

Then, she took a step, and was falling. Instinct, blind and unthinking, flooded through him, and he could no more deny it than he could will his breath to still or his heart to stop beating. He moved like a ghost, with all the soundless speed that his training gave him, or perhaps more, for this place had changed since last he'd come here. It was more fluid now, reacting more to the thoughts and emotions of the inhabitants within it. Whatever it was, it let him reach her before she struck the ground, his arms catching her and holding her to the solid strength of his plastron, as he had done so often for the other members of his family who had needed him.

Contact, sweet and blinding, and the sibling-sense redoubled. He could feel the turmoil within her as strongly as if it were his own — indeed, his own feelings were no less tangled — and the wind returned, buffeting them both. This place was too much. It was hurting her. He curled over her, blocking the worst of it with the bulwark of his shell, and reached out with his mind to the other place he went to when he needed time to think.

The air changed, along with the ground beneath them. No longer the cold wind and damp grass of the aurora land, but warm, moist ocean air scented with the perfume of night-blooming flowers. He knelt at the edge of the jungle, where earth and roots gave way to sand, with Karai still cradled in his arms. Another star-dusted sky arced overhead, undimmed by the light of any civilization, but the curtain of the aurora was gone from it. Instead, the light lay in the warm ocean that lapped a few feet away, a thousand points of sparkling blue dancing in the waves that lapped over the beach. Gone was the roaring of the wind, the only sound now the ceaseless rolling thunder of the waves against the shore.

"There's more," he whispered. "There's another chapter to the story. But I don't… I don't know how to tell it…"

He trailed off, leaving a word unspoken between them. It hung in his heart, bright and terrible. Strange… and yet somehow wonderful as well.

_Neesan._

* * *

Arms caught her fall, and for that Karai was grateful, but Leonardo turned the same movement into a relentless embrace that took her breath away. The last of her fear was eradicated when Leonardo bent double over her form, taking the brunt of the dying world's rage as his hold grew fiercer still. She surrendered, then. Her legs buckled beneath her, Leonardo's arms compensating the loss with ease as they provided warmth and strength where hers had failed.

The softness of his voice was a small thing compared to being held so tenderly. Karai shrunk into herself, turning away from the lightning-cracked sky as the wind whipped violently against them.

And then, almost without transition, they were in a place where stars washed upon the shore with every push and pull of the tide. The darkness that pressed at her from all sides was a good darkness, made benevolent by the glittering lights that adorned it so beautifully. In that moment, her senses were assailed with an wonderful awareness she had never experienced with such intensity before. Every heartbeat that thudded through the bone of Leonardo's chest was echoed by the ocean's rhythmic pounding. Light sprang from the water, the sky illuminated with stars and the iridescent sea beneath even as the jungle thrummed to the course of Leonardo's blood. The island lived as he lived, the warm air's caress as much a promise of safety as his embrace.

She'd almost forgotten the revelation that brought them there. But the warm breath pulsing at her brow came ragged and strained. Was he tired? He must have been tired. How much effort did it take to create a world? Two?

The beach's silence made her own heartbeats sound loud and her breathing cacophonous. Karai suddenly became hyperaware of the intimacy in their closeness; she'd been held more kindly by a mutant boy than anyone else for years, but she couldn't deny that it felt _good._ Right. She breathed in the smell of him and saw who she could have been under the tutelage of…Hamato Yoshi. Father. Karai grew shy as her eyes brimmed and spilled over. It was a wonder that one could feel pain and joy all so deeply at once.

"…Leonardo?"

She knew his name, but hadn't spoken it before. It felt strange and cumbersome upon her tongue, and she wondered why he refused to let her go. Unable to speak, too raw to offer any proper comfort, Karai pressed a palm to his plastron instead, fingertips curling hesitantly into a groove she found there. He looked at her, prompted by the touch, but she'd already turned eyes to the sea. It would be a long time before she'd be able to tear her gaze away.

_'There's more.'_

She almost felt fear, but the ocean rumbled on, and told her it would not hurt them. The hand at his plastron slid away and Karai stood to her feet steadier than she had before. She took a step, then another, entranced by the glistening of the shore before holding out a hand behind her in invitation. Leonardo's touch was still a very foreign thing to the girl, if only because she'd never encountered the likes of it. For now, she wanted to hold his hand. His hand and the lights would give her courage.

"Finish the story," Karai said, fingertips skimming along the rough wrappings at Leonardo's palm. "But this time, use names."


	7. Chapter 7

It was the sound of his name that shattered something within his heart. Shattered, and made it whole again. She was crying, but then, so was he. Quietly, he pulled the dampened fabric from over his eyes and tucked it into his belt instead. She rose to her feet, and he found himself tugged in her wake, bound by the fledgling bonds of a kinship newly realized that would not allow him to be parted from her. The sibling sense was blossoming within him, seeking her out and claiming her as his own as surely as any of his other siblings. There was drumming, a rhythm beneath his feet, the sound of something ancient and wild. A primordial beat timed to the pounding of his heart.

Or perhaps it was merely the thunder of the waves against the shore.

She reached out to him then, and he reached back for her, his fingers brushing against the cold harshness of metal and mesh. Frowning, he traced his hands along the edges of her gauntlet, finding the tiny catches that held the shell of her armour closed. He teased them apart gently, just enough to pull the metal from her hand. Letting it drop to the sand, he took her hand in his, marveling at the warmth of her bare palm against his. His fingers closed over hers, and there was a rightness to it.

He knew that what he had to say next had the power to either heal or hurt. Knew that what his story did to her would depend on his telling of it. So he brought his other hand up, her little one now held in both of his, and as the warm breeze swirled about them like a gossamer cocoon, swaddling them in the scent of flowers, and growing things, and life, he drew a deep breath.

"Hamato Yoshi, now Splinter, had four sons. The youngest grew up to be a being of light and love. The next had a mind that would have put the great thinkers of history to shame. The next burned with passion and a drive to protect the innocent and the helpless. And the oldest loved his three brothers desperately, and devoted his life to ensuring that they were safe. And so it was that when the cleverest of them all created a machine that ripped a hole in the fabric of the world, it was the oldest who got in the way to protect the others, and fell through space and time into a world that was not his own."

He took a small step forward, his hand still holding hers, until the warmth of the luminous waters lapped against his toes. "He couldn't get home," he said. "But what he did discover was a multitude of worlds on the other side of the rift. Some very much like his own, and some as different as night and day. Some were lovely beyond imagining, and some crueler than nightmares." The light of the stars picked out the whiteness of the scars on his arm as he gave them a rueful glance. "And the more time he spent in this place across the rift, the more his mind opened to the different worlds within it. It was a gift that no version of himself or his brothers in these new worlds shared, and though they took him in and welcomed him, he found himself wandering in the quiet moments, exploring the multiverse for something, anything, that would help him find his way home."

His breath caught, the tears sliding down his cheeks to feed the sea with salt.

"Until one day, he found a world so much like his own, at first he thought he had made it home. Only there was something different about the feel of his home there. Yin where there should have been yang. But then, someone spoke his name, and he realized the truth."

He turned to her then, his gaze studying the eyes that he knew so well now. Eyes he had seen turned on him in both love from one face and hate from another. A mother's legacy to her little girl.

"There was one world. One in all the thousands that drift like islands through a sea of time. One world in which Yoshi was the one who perished in the fire that day. One world in which Yoshi died, but Shen… Shen lived. And came to the new land. One world in which Shen fought the creatures from beyond the stars, and was changed into something new. And it was in this world that Shen, now Master Shard, raised her four sons. And recognized her son in this lost wanderer, and spoke his name, Leonardo, and welcomed him as her own."

He faltered then, not knowing how to continue, and his voice when he continued was rough with the flood of emotion that threatened to stop his words entirely.

"Miwa…. _neesan_… I found her. I found our mother."


	8. Chapter 8

Gentle pressure stayed her steps, and Karai waited with a touch of impatience as Leonardo toiled with her gauntlet. She studied his searching movements for several seconds and drew her fingers together so the metal armor could slip when the hidden clasp came undone. It fell to the ground, taking the mesh of her sleeve with it. In afterthought, Karai dug the toe of one boot into the heel of the other, deftly removing them both before kicking them aside with a spray of sand.

Their hands met once more. Carefully, the hesitant brush of skin an entirely novel experience that Karai was helpless to describe as anything else but warm, satisfying, and incredibly vital to her being. A steady strength that reminded her Leonardo had more of his story to tell.

From within his grasp, her hand tugged him closer to the shore until the sparkling tide sloshed at bare feet and the lights made Leonardo's eyes refract brilliantly. Eddied wind and water lazed about them both with gentle assurances, and once he'd begun to speak, a tremor set itself deep within the girl's bones. The obvious pride and affect in his voice when he spoke of his brothers elicited a strange emotion she couldn't quite bring herself to name. Not yet.

Karai did her best to envision the brothers as Leonardo described, his intense love for them bared to her with every word. It was infectious and elicited a desperate yearning to rise within her, an inexplicable desire to have seen _this_ side of them instead of the anger and mistrust Karai herself had bitterly fostered. Regret darkened her expression and the sudden shame she felt turned each memory into stinging reproach.

And yet the lost one gazed on at her without judgement.

Suddenly, the pace of the story increased, Leonardo's voice thick with emotion. His words came torrential, some catching, others tripping in their haste to be heard. The gentle hands about hers squeezed tightly, and Karai wondered if he was offering comfort or seeking it with the smallest of gestures. Her heart grew cold in her chest as she realized it pained him deeply to speak of the brothers he'd lost-but the boy would not stop, as he had not stopped upon the hilltop before. He'd begun, and he would finish, brandishing the memories of his beloved with all the loving pride he could muster.

_'…he found himself wandering in the quiet moments, exploring the multiverse for something, anything, that would help him find his way home.'_

They were the same. Children wandering as best they could through life. Hoping against hope they'd somehow stumble upon an answer to end the painful journey in favor of a new one.

She'd found everythingin Leonardo.

Karai took a sloshing step towards him, free hand coming up to stroke at his snout. Her caress trailed, finding his tears and thumbing them away even as more fell to replace them. She couldn't speak. Her hand slid to Leonardo's jaw, the pads of her fingers easing hesitantly over beaded scales that were just shy of skin in their smoothness. His eyes, glassy and bright, nevertheless were tinged with a tiredness that only became visible when he spoke of the path he had yet to traverse, and Karai realized she was powerless to help him. Her hand fell away to rest atop his own. Scars adorned him, cried out the stories of dangerous battles and lives protected, made him beautiful to to her, and yet she still could not speak. She had not the courage, and Leonardo had not finished his tale.

He took on strength as he continued, words flowing with surety that eradicated doubt before it could rear its head. Yin in place of Yang, a moon where the sun should have been, woman, not man. Karai's eyes widened and spilled even as she shook her head vehemently, "-it isn't possible, it can't be done,_ it can't-it can't-_" but his gaze was honest in its intensity upon her, even as the waves sprang merrily and reminded her of the ocean's massive presence where a city should have been instead.

Yin and Yang.

Of course it was possible.

Miwa.

She began to laugh.

_Neesan_.

A tremor of recognition coursed down her spine at the name.

He'd found her.

It was the last permission Karai needed before she staggered forward as if struck, a peal of sobbing laughter heaving at her chest as she leapt upon the boy before her and held on for life, for dear, precious life. Insurmountable joy flooded Karai until she was drunk on it, the sparkling tide sloshing loudly about her as if it too, thrived in the revelation.

And then in a moment of somber recognition, her breathless laughter turned into weeping. Karai lost herself in the emotions that surged along with the ocean tide, joy becoming grief even as grief gave way to a debilitating sense of relief that she was wanted, and found. She clung to the mutant, the boy, her brother.

"I won't let him hurt you. Never again. I swear it. You've protected _so many_-"

Her voice caught and trembled, but it was anger, intense and protective, that made her hand shake as it rested atop Leo's head and drew him near.

"I won't let him hurt the family he stole from me."

The sudden burst of fiery rage extinguished as quickly as it had burned. Exhaustion was left in its wake, and Karai rested her chin upon the boy's head as she stroked the back of it hesitantly, if only to keep herself from crying more than she had.

"I may not know how to get you back to your world, but I promise you this," she said in a murmur. "I will protect you. And I will help you keep them safe as best I can. _Wakari masu ka_, _otouto_?"


	9. Chapter 9

Her hand against his face was gentle, but far from soft; it bore the same calluses that his own did, a reminder of yet another thing shared between them. And yet that hand, that had such a short time ago been turned against him in anger, now offered comfort, brushing his tears away. Exploring, with hesitant curiosity, the feel of his face. By all rights, this should be a gesture that was old. Familiar. A gesture shared between them his entire life. And though that right had been denied her,_something_ echoed between them from the void between the worlds. Somewhere, far away, beyond his reach, perhaps there was a world where things had been different. A world where Miwa had been raised alongside her brothers, that connection resonating across the myriad worlds to find them now. Perhaps that was why this strange gesture felt so familiar.

So right.

She laughed, when he finally told her, and of all the reactions he planned for, this was one he had not been expecting. He had been so afraid of hurting her, he had forgotten what his family was. They were light. Comfort. A beacon in the dark sea of the world that surrounded them.

Joy.

He caught her as she lurched toward him, his arms wrapping around her waist even as she clung to him. And at that sudden, complete contact, the fledgling awareness that had been flowering within him twined around her, binding her to him as surely as the rest of his brothers, the link still fragile and tenuous where theirs was strong and bright, but there nonetheless. Whatever this was they had started, it could not be undone now.

His arms tightened as the surf threw spumes of white foam around their feet, his hold on her lifting her bare toes from the waves as another realization hit him. All those years growing up, when he had played pretend with his little brothers, one narrative thread had woven through their adventures with spaceships and dinosaurs, fairy tales and superheroes. An idea Leo had that he could not let go of, in which he found their missing sister, not dead but lost, and brought her back to them, making their family whole. In his wild fantasies she had always been a baby; it had never occurred to him to imagine her as anything other than the child in the photograph. Had never truly understood that she would be his older sister. And then, in the way of childhood dreams, it had faded and been left behind. Forgotten… until now.

He hadn't just found their mother.

"I found you, too," he whispered, and there was awe in his voice.

And then she was crying, and his hand drifted up to cradle her head, stroking her wild hair grown damp with the spray of salt, his hold promising comfort, and protection, and support as his sister – _his sister_ – wept against him. She was not alone any more. He would not let her be alone. Not while she needed him.

She held him closer, making promises that burned bright in the dark, and Leo's heart shuddered within him. He had always been the oldest. The one whose responsibility it was to watch over the others. He had never thought that there would be another to share the job with him. Then had come April, who had gone a long way to lessening that burden, but she was still a student herself. Still in need of his protection, which he gave freely and without reservation, for he loved her. But here was his sister, a true kunoichi, an elder sibling who could stand on equal footing with him and face down the nightmares that threatened their brothers from the shadows.

She rested her head against his, her hand stroking in a motion that he recognized as his mother's, and his heart wrenched within him. The man who had taken her from him, whose name he would not allow to taint this place of possibilities, had twisted her. Attempted to shape her into a copy of himself. But that gesture revealed the deeper truth. The legacy of his parents was still hers, and deep within her, a bright seed clung stubbornly to life despite the darkness with which _that_ one had attempted to choke it.

_Choices. Possibility. Hope._

Holding her tighter, the tears spilled down his cheeks anew at her promise, making spots against her chest. A faint smile touched his face as an absurd thought – _the salt water is going to ruin your armour – _popped unbidden into his head. She promised to protect him. And his brothers. He had always wondered who would watch over the one who had to care for the others. But now, he had his answer.

He buried his head against her, shaking just a little. "I understand, _neesan_." He couldn't let go. Not now. Not with the shadow of what her promise meant hanging over them. Still hiding his face, unable to look into her eyes – his mother's eyes – he offered her a quiet plea. "Don't go back there," he whispered. "Stay with us." But honour compelled him to amend that last statement, for this was a place that called for honesty, raw and absolute.

"Stay with me."


	10. Chapter 10

Karai grew cold and warm all at once, terrified by the responsibility he invited her to partake of, elated by the namesake he was so quick to use, _neesan_, inspiring protectiveness in her embrace even as her eyes drifted shut to savor the moment's intimacy.

She'd become a child who'd been offered a first look at her newborn brother, getting a sense of his form, warmth, and vulnerability, all the while in awe of his nuanced perfection.

And as any child would, Karai had a host of questions eager to be heard. Nestled in her arms was the promise of answers to come, but under the heavy carapace at his back, she could still feel Leonardo shaking.

He knew as well she did the brilliant place he'd brought her to could only last so long.

Karai drew away. Her hands nevertheless found a place on Leonardo's shoulders to rest on as she searched his face, willing him to look at her, and to listen.

"I may not have given you reason to before, but-"

Karai caught herself, falling silent and recollecting her thoughts carefully as she slid palms down his arms to take his hands into her own. Studying them, thumbing at the rough knuckles she found there, her heart focusing on him again, only him, and then a half remembered Tang Shen. It didn't matter if the sea swallowed itself and the sky was snuffed out by city lights. The mere thought that the world about them could disappear seemed inconsequential when its creator leaned so heavily into her arms.

He needed strength. Not guidance, never that, for Leonardo was a North Star if she'd ever seen one, but the role of an Atlas didn't suit him.

"I need you to believe in me. Trust in my sword," she said, even as her grip became almost unbearably tight and she tugged the boy closer. "I've found my truth. You've given me a new purpose to live for, and this_ changes everything_, but-"

A hand slipped away and pressed open-palmed to her chest.

"_I'm still angry_."

More than angry. Furious. Enraged and eager to make Saki regret having ever attempted against her family-but the waves were gentle, and the sky still beautifully luminous. Even they were not enough to sway her ire, but Leonardo was. Breath catching, Karai was forced to steel herself against a sudden onslaught of grief at the thought of being parted from him even one more night.

_'The day I desert is the day I order a death sentence on them all.'_

"I have to go back." A clipped voice that had gone dissonant as she continued. "Any change in my regimen is bound to be noticed-and questioned. I may hold high rank, but it seems I've been nothing more than a pawn to him from the very beginning."

She paused, searching gaze still riveted intently upon her brother.

"I promised my protection to our family. I need you to promise your trust in me. Until we can find a way to rid ourselves of _him_ once and for all, we'll have to keep our distances a while longer."

An uncharacteristically hesitant smile curved her mouth as she touched knuckles lightly against Leonardo's chin.

"It's not like we've ever had trouble finding each other before."


End file.
